The boulder setter is not, as some believe, a mere boulder ‘creator’. The boulder setter is responsible for reading the terrain, enhancing geological structures, and ensuring the safety of climbing attempts.
Each line selected involves a process of exploration and verification in the field, all while respecting the environment and the identity of the place.
It is an invisible work, often taken for granted, yet fundamental: what is seen (and climbed) is only the last act of a long and meticulous sequence of decisions, intuitions, corrections.
The rock climbing of yesteryear was all about simple visions, bare hands on the rock and a genuine curiosity about movement. There were no crash pads, precise grades or social networks, there were the essentials: the rock, the gesture and the silence of the forest.
Today, that legacy still lives on, transformed perhaps, but I like to think it is intact in spirit.
Melloblocco gathers precisely this: a link between past and present, between those who climbed the boulders by intuition and those who face them today with passion and awareness.
Those who still climb those boulders today are unconsciously performing an ancient gesture.
The bouldering, the sassismo of yesteryear is not dead: it lives on in every line drawn with respect, in every silent ascent, in every fall and every time we get up and try again.
It is not an improvised festival, nor an impromptu gathering: Melloblocco has been and continues to be a world reference for outdoor climbing for twenty years.
A place of international comparison, where athletes, amateurs, technicians and the curious converge to live an authentic, concrete and unspectacular experience, in direct contact with the rock and landscape of Val Masino.
Reducing all of this to a simple "sporting event" does not do justice to those who have been building this reality for years with seriousness and effort, to those who dedicate themselves to cleaning a boulder, to those who move the crash pad, to those who lose skin on their fingers trying to go beyond their limits.
This is not just a reflection, but an invitation.
To look at the mountain with different eyes.
To understand that climbing is not just about climbing a boulder or reaching a summit, but about being part of an environment that has its rules, its silence, its beauty.
Every time we move on the rock, we leave a trace.
Let's make sure it's a light, conscious, respectful mark.
For the mountain is not ours.
It hosts us, and that's enough.